Post/Zip codes and Ireland

Sarsfield

I have no great problems with An Post. Anything I've bought or sold via eBay has been delivered promptly (UK & Ireland). Althoygh I believe charges for small packets have been increased dramatically this month?

All my Christmas cards arrived promptly except for one which was sent from Northern Ireland, so I have to blame the Royal Mail for that.

I think this i just another case of assuming we're worse than everyone else at doing things. Which to be honest is rubbish. Although there are a lot of things we would do much better.

And I'm all in favour of a proper postcode system for a number of reasons already discussed.

MrPudding

Calina wrote:

Stuff sent from play.com has on average taken four days.

I really find that astonishing. I have never, ever received anything from Play less than a week after it was dispatched. I would say it is normally 10 days, including weekends.

MrP

Calina

MrPudding wrote:

Of course it does, why wouldn’t it? Does the world stop at the weekend? Do lorries and boats stop? Is there no one working in An Post at the weekend?

I believe they sort at the weekend, although they don't deliver.

dts

Things did used to get to us quicker when we lived in Lucan. I still find it hard to believe you would get anything the same week using an post!
Two days from the UK? This must be using some other carrier?
Maybe you get mail faster in Dublin because you have postcodes??????????

Calina

dts wrote:

Things did used to get to us quicker when we lived in Lucan. I still find it hard to believe you would get anything the same week using an post!
Two days from the UK? This must be using some other carrier?
Maybe you get mail faster in Dublin because you have postcodes??????????

I don't live in a postcode area. And two days from the UK came Royal Mail/An Post. Not another carrier.

dts

It had to be special delivery?
I get stuff from eBay and shops in the UK delivered to Mullingar and if it’s less than two weeks then I am amazed.

Slice

In my own experience everything I've ordered from the UK takes between 4-6 working days, all national post is delivered the following working day.

dts

May be it is a regional thing then? Westmeath must be particularly bad?

MrPudding

dts wrote:

May be it is a regional thing then? Westmeath must be particularly bad?

I am in South County Dublin in an estate. There should be no excuse.

I would love to know why a letter sent to my mum in the north from a post box takes 3 to 5 days but when I drop it in the mail bag a work before 1300Hrs it is there next day. This mail is not franked, I put a stamp on it myself. How does that work?

MrP

corktina

Maskhadov wrote:

Im going into that Alun because its off thread. In short i think Anglo Saxons are odd, germans do things the right way but some important gene was lost when they travelled across the English channel :O

check out your history, my boy...the Angles and the Saxons and various others invaded Britain(from Northern Europe mostly) and supplanted the Britons, who i believe were Celts and were driven out (or assimilated ) (or plain killed...) to Cornwall, Wales Scotland and Ireland (where they in turn supplanted the natives....)
So please dont impose the language of the Minority on the Majority, cos historically you dont have a leg to stand on, and even in the Gaeltacht they arent too pleased with Dingles new name, are they.....

PS i'm an anglo-saxon and I definately am odd......

bandraoi

The simplest way to do post codes in Ireland would be for everybody to simply work out their National Grid Reference and give that when asked for a post code.

There'd be no need to set up a system cross referencing addresses or go to any expense.

Ambulances/Fire brigades/Police/Courier companies and everybody else would be able to find any house out the country or in the town with little difficulty.

Alun

bandraoi wrote:

The simplest way to do post codes in Ireland would be for everybody to simply work out their National Grid Reference and give that when asked for a post code.

That'd be either a 12-digit number or a sheet letter and a 10-digit number to get down to 1-metre resolution. Not exactly very easy to remember, I'd say. Also not sure it'd be that useful for sorting purposes which usually require a hierarchical system defining non-rectangular areas.

LordSutch

Maskhadov wrote:

Postcodes will do a lot to eat away the Vested intrests of the unions simply by allowing other companies to deliver mail that is quick and efficent.

What is your real problem with Post Codes Maskhadov? I lived in England for donkeys years and I must say the Royal Mail + Post codes are an efficient combination! (two posts a day + Saturday).

Regularly I would get post at work with just the bare minimum of an address printed on the envelope: Example (My Name, Middlesex, TW15 5JQ, England) as you can see from this example, the Post Code can be very handy especially for people who cant be arsed to fill the full address, and obviously if there are several streets all with similar names then a Post Code can also be of great benefit!

I think it would make a lot of sense to have a similar Post Code system to the UK or maybe even extend the UK system down here! How does that sound Maskhadov

bandraoi

you wouldn't need 1 metre resolution.
An 8 digit number with a sheet number would give you a ten metre square area.
That's not too unwieldy.
Out the country that's enough to find a house.
In the city that'll get you the right street.

You could probably get away with a six digit number, giving you 100m square.
A post code in England covers about ten houses, and is six or seven letters/digits.

The advantage of just using the grid reference is that for no set up costs everybody can find the location you specify with no hassle.

All you need is people to look up their grid reference once and make a note of it.

If a courier company decided to use the system they could simply link to the maps and get people to pinpoint their own house.

Alun

Ok, but a postcode in the UK (they have them in Scotland, Wales and NI too, you know) defines a street, or part of a street. A six digit grid reference as you suggested would cover an arbitrary 100mx100m square which might encompass several part sections of different streets in densely populated areas. Post is normally sorted according to rounds, which in turn consist of a number of streets, not a rectangular area defined by a grid reference.

BTW, if you didn't know already, pretty much every car satnav system available with UK mapping uses postcodes (plus optional house number) to locate addresses, it's a pretty easy conversion, with the necessary data being provided by the Post Office.

LordSutch

And here are some I made earlier (as they say on Blue Peter)


DS18 QR27 = Dublin South, area18 (Shankill), Quinns Road, House Number 27

DW12 BE47= Dublin West, area12 (Tallaght), Balally Estate, House number 47

The Area code should be the code as currently used by An Post!

Pretty neat eah?

Victor

bandraoi wrote:

You could probably get away with a six digit number, giving you 100m square.

While much finer than the existing system, I'm not sure it could properly handle areas like Temple Bar (where streets are perhaps 20m apart) quite as well as other systems. The ideal system would go down to one metre as this is the scale of a door. 100m scale could potentially give you two sides of a river with no bridge.

ArthurF wrote:

DS18 QR27 = Dublin South, area18 (Shankill), Quinns Road, House Number 27

Alpha-numeric is harder for a computer to read than numeric only (fewer errors). Of course there are 26 counties and 26 letter in the alphabet. What do you do in areas where you have Balally Estate, Brooklands Estate, Bowbridge Estate all together.

Metrobest

I think there's something quaint about the lack of postcodes in Ireland. People find it charming that we haven't tackled the crass commercialism of the UK. Direct marketing is still in its infancy in Ireland - that's thanks to lack of postcodes.

You wouldn't believe the amount of junk mail that comes through your letterbox in Holland. The poor rainforests.

However, if Ireland adopts postcodes I prefer the Dutch system. The codes are easy to remember and are always in the same format - Not like the UK system which has varying amounts of digits. I also like the way the name of the city comes last in Dutch addresses
eg. 134 Damrak, 1012 AZ, Amsterdam
not. 134 Suburbia, London NW whatever

Macy

All post codes will do is vastly increase the amount of junk mail we get. Direct marketing is the main people want to push it, and then the potential rivals to an post who see it as easy money. The only difference I see from when I lived in Manch is the reduced junk mail (and the amount still going to me mam's in my name staggers me after 6.5 years away) and the Saturday deliver.

For all those saying how great the UK system is, it was on BBC news a few times how the UK system wasn't coping and the delays that it was causing. Purely anecdotal, but me mam's friend works in a post office in Manch and said there were massive backlogs and delays with collection, sorting etc. It's a bit harsh people blaming an post when it was more likely it was getting this far.

bandraoi

You could get away with a six digit number, but I think the eight digit option would work the best.

For a six digit number it's only in the cities that a 100m square area would mean lots of houses within one block, but all those houses would have street names and numbers on the envelope anyway, their addresses work to find the house.
It's out the country that addresses can't be used to find houses, because one address can cover a large townland. Individual houses are shown on maps so it's easy enough for a sat nav system to pick out the route.

An eight digit number would work pretty much everywhere, and would be preferable.

Direct marketers couldn't use a national grid reference if they're going through An Post. They would still need the official address.

Courier companies/Ambulance Services/Fire Brigades/Garda Síochana could use the national grid reference in conjunction with addresses to find where they need to find though.

Slice

I don't think we've properly justified the introduction of postcodes in Ireland from the point of view of anyone with an address.

- It will increase the amount of junk mail
- It wont make An Post deliveries any quicker

The only benefit is that it will increase competition - however it remains to be seen how competition would lead to lower prices for consumers in the area of postal deliveries since there are no examples of this elsewhere. Competition may only come about in specific areas of deliveries such as deliveries of large parcels, etc but this won't mean sh*t to anyone looking for cheaper costs when posting their Christmas cards.

The only people campaigning for this is some Irish business association for direct marketing, in other words, the guys that want to send us all the junk mail.

Ultimately competition in specific areas of postal deliveries would erode An Post's ability to provide the service it currently does because it would cannibalise areas where An Post can make a profit. An yet An Post would still be obliged to provide a universal postal service even if it's unprofitable.

LordSutch

Victor wrote:

While much finer than the existing system, I'm not sure it could properly handle areas like Temple Bar (where streets are perhaps 20m apart) quite as well as other systems. The ideal system would go down to one metre as this is the scale of a door. 100m scale could potentially give you two sides of a river with no bridge.

Alpha-numeric is harder for a computer to read than numeric only (fewer errors). Of course there are 26 counties and 26 letter in the alphabet. What do you do in areas where you have Balally Estate, Brooklands Estate, Bowbridge Estate all together.

Surely the Royal Mail have coped perfectly well with UK Post Codes for decades? and there must be cramped areas like Temple Bar in many UK Cities, and as for computers not being able to read Alpha Numeric Post codes? hmm, not sure about that one Victor?

Hagar

In France when you buy a packet of envelopes they have five boxes pre-printed on them so that you write the post code clearly in a specific place. This is for the auto-sorting machinery and isn't any inconvenience for the sender.

mackerski

ArthurF wrote:

Surely the Royal Mail have coped perfectly well with UK Post Codes for decades? and there must be cramped areas like Temple Bar in many UK Cities, and as for computers not being able to read Alpha Numeric Post codes? hmm, not sure about that one Victor?

The clue is in your opening sentence - decades ago, there was no way to scan all letters and have a computer extract a postcode, so there's no reason to suppose that they designed for this eventuality. And there is no doubt that, particularly where handwriting is concerned, recognition of a code known to be strictly numeric is easier (which, in these high-tech days means "less error-prone", not "faster").

Dermot

corktina

Hagar wrote:

In France when you buy a packet of envelopes they have five boxes pre-printed on them so that you write the post code clearly in a specific place. This is for the auto-sorting machinery and isn't any inconvenience for the sender.

not sure that French Letters would be all that approved of in some quarters here......

Victor

Hagar wrote:

In France when you buy a packet of envelopes they have five boxes pre-printed on them so that you write the post code clearly in a specific place. This is for the auto-sorting machinery and isn't any inconvenience for the sender.

In Russia, you can get envelopes that are designed to simplify the way people hand-write the entire address - like a 1970s calculator.

This isn't a perfect copy, but it gives you the idea.

Hagar

corktina wrote:

not sure that French Letters would be all that approved of in some quarters here......

LOL

Maskhadov

:D ahh dear Russia

antoinolachtnai

We badly need postcodes in Ireland because 40 percent of addresses are non-unique (i.e., there is more than 1 house that has the exact same postal address).

You have to consider all the other types of delivery, not just postal deliveries. For example, couriers have a lot of difficulty with rural addresses, and this is almost certainly the reason the international express carriers don't offer their full range of courier services to Irish addresses, for example. It takes a long time for them to figure out the location, and it is impossible for them to predict how long a given delivery will take. Another example is delivery of furniture or appliances. A further example is ambulance services. I believe a man died last year in Kerry after the ambulance he summoned via 999 called out to the wrong house and couldn't find anybody there.

A grid system won't work well for a postcode. It shows you where the place is, but gives no indication of how to deliver to it (i.e., what road it is close to).

A system based on street names gives no indication of where the place is relative to other places. Also, many roads and streets in Ireland do not have names.

A system with letters in it lends itself to confusion. Too many of the letters look and sound like one another.

5 digits will get you to electoral district (ED) level with plenty of spare capacity for expansion. Like it or not, the ED is the basic unit of local administration in Ireland. They have clear existing statutory boundaries and 150 years of statistics have been collected on the basis of them. a further 4 digits will get you down to individual house numbers.

A further 2 digits will bring you to the nearest road segment. A final two digit will bring you down to the individual building.

The main driver of direct mail at the moment is An Post and its employees. Postmen get a bonus for each extra item of direct mail they carry, and this is an important part of their wage-packet.

Victor

antoinolachtnai wrote:

The main driver of direct mail at the moment is An Post and its employees. Postmen get a bonus for each extra item of direct mail they carry, and this is an important part of their wage-packet.

There is a difference between dropping in flyers with the post and direct mail. Direct mail means I target specific people (by ages, sex, shopping habits, car ownership, etc.) not just every post box in a specific street.